The film is ranked #61 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies" and #9 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "50 Best High School Movies", while Witherspoon's performance was ranked at #45 on the list of the "100 Greatest Film Performances of All Time" by Premiere.

Contents

Plot1

Cast2

Production3

Locations3.1

Reception4

References5

External links6

Plot

Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) is a much-admired high school teacher in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska, who is actively involved in many after-school activities, one of which is overseeing the student government election process. Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) is an overachieving junior with an insufferable air of self-importance. Earlier in the year, another teacher, Jim's best friend Dave Novotny (Mark Harelik), had seduced Tracy and began carrying on an affair with her. When Tracy's mother learned of the affair and reported it to school authorities, Dave was fired from his job and divorced by his wife, Linda (Delaney Driscoll), while Tracy's reputation was unscathed.

Against this backdrop, Tracy announces that she is running for student council president. When Tracy presents Mr. McAllister with her list of nominating signatures to qualify for the election ballot, she makes a remark about "working closely" together that he interprets as an indication she may try to seduce him. Annoyed by Tracy's presumptuousness and disturbed by the absence of any opposing candidates to challenge her in the election, Mr. McAllister decides to persuade junior Paul Metzler (Chris Klein), an affable and popular (yet dull-witted) football player who has been sidelined by a ski injury, to enter the race. Although Paul is initially ambivalent, Mr. McAllister ultimately prevails upon him to run, much to Tracy's consternation.

Meanwhile, Paul's adopted younger sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell) is rejected by her romantic interest Lisa (Frankie Ingrassia), who dismisses their time together as "experimenting." Lisa then engages in a passionate relationship with Paul. In retaliation, Tammy decides to run for school president as well. During a school assembly to hear the candidate's speeches, after Tracy only draws polite applause and Paul is barely able to read his speech, Tammy announces that the office of school president is useless and declares that she will dissolve the student government if elected. The speech rallies the students to a standing ovation, but her subversive diatribe results in her being given a multi-day suspension from school.

While working on another project after school, Tracy has a fit of rage and destroys all of Paul's campaign posters. She then drives to a local power plant to dispose of the shredded posters in a nearby dumpster. Unbeknownst to Tracy, her attempted cover-up is witnessed by Tammy. The next day, when Mr. McAllister confronts Tracy about the missing posters and lectures her that "all of our actions can carry serious consequences," Tracy adamantly claims innocence and angrily threatens to sue for defamation. At that moment, Tammy knocks on the door and tells Mr. MacAllister she knows who tore down the posters. Tracy is asked to wait outside the room while Tammy speaks to Mr. McAllister. Tracy experiences a moment of sheer panic when she peers in the window only to see Tammy revealing the shredded posters. What Tracy can't hear is that Tammy is falsely confessing to a skeptical Mr. McAllister that it is she, not Tracy, who perpetrated the poster sabotage. As a result, Tammy is disqualified from the election and expelled from school. Tracy is now off the hook. But this clearly does not sit well with Jim, who still suspects Tracy is the guilty party.

The day before the election, Linda Novotny asks Jim to come over to help unclog her bathtub drain. After Jim completes the job, Linda unexpectedly initiates a sexual liaison with him and then suggests that he book a motel room for them to continue their dalliance later that day (a proposition Jim himself had half-jokingly made to Linda shortly after her breakup with Dave). However, Linda apparently has a change of heart and is nowhere to be found when Jim arrives at her house to pick her up for their tryst. Not knowing where Linda could be, Jim walks into her backyard where he has the misfortune of being stung by a bee on his right eyelid, causing a terribly painful and unsightly allergic reaction. He then drives back to the motel and desperately tries to reach Linda by phone, but to no avail. Jim eventually returns to his own house later that evening only to find Linda and his wife (Molly Hagan) huddled together crying in the living room. Realizing that Linda has disclosed the infidelity to his wife and that he is no longer welcome at home, Jim spends a miserable night sleeping in his car outside Linda's house.

The next day — election day — Jim oversees the counting of the ballots, though by now his right eyelid is grotesquely swollen and almost completely shut as a result of the bee sting. Paul had voted for Tracy, feeling that it would be arrogant to vote for himself. But this turns out to be a costly decision. The ballots are meticulously counted by a duo of student auditors, who determine that Tracy has prevailed by a single vote. It is then up to Jim to perform a final ballot count to certify the outcome. When Jim happens to spot Tracy dancing excitedly in the hall, he deduces that she may have been tipped off about the vote count. Angered by Tracy's unseemly display of glee and her dirty-tricks campaign tactics, Jim decides to take matters into his own hands by surreptitiously disposing of two of Tracy's ballots and declaring Paul the official victor. This turnabout elicits incredulity and shock from the two student auditors, who are certain that their original vote count was accurate. Tracy is shocked and despondent upon hearing the unexpected news of her defeat. A day later, however, the school janitor (to whom Jim was rude earlier) discovers the two discarded ballots in the trash and presents them to the principal. When Jim is confronted with the evidence of his fraudulent intervention, he resigns.

Divorced and publicly humiliated, Jim leaves Nebraska, choosing to fulfill his longtime dream of moving to University of Nebraska, while Tammy becomes romantically involved with a fellow student at the all-girls Catholic school where her parents have enrolled her following her misconduct at public school. As the film draws to a close, Jim is in Washington D.C. and sees Tracy enter a limousine with a congressman who she appears to work for as a member of his congressional staff. Enraged at the thought of Tracy, yet again, manipulating her way into political success, Jim hurls a soda at the limousine, then makes a quick getaway. The film ends with Jim posing questions to a group of schoolchildren who are visiting the museum, deliberately ignoring the raised hand of an overeager girl who reminds him of Tracy Flick.

Production

Director Alexander Payne had become a fan of the novel by Tom Perrotta on which the film is based; the novel's rights were sold to Payne in January 1997. The novel was inspired by two key events. The first was the 1992 Bush vs. Clinton election campaign, in which Ross Perot entered as a third party candidate (a move echoed by Tammy Metzler). The second was an incident at Memorial High School in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in which a pregnant student was elected homecoming queen, but staff announced a different winner and burned the ballots to cover it up.[1][2] Payne specifically had in mind Matthew Broderick for the part due to his role as the popular student in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, this role to be a play on that with Broderick now playing an authority figure; a teacher who is respected by students.

The film uses a number of stylized techniques in its storytelling, particularly through the use of freeze frames, flashbacks and voiceovers, which allow sections of the narrative to be delivered from the points of view of the four main characters.[3]

The film was originally shot with an ending close to the one found in the novel, with Jim McCallister working in a car dealership, where Tracy visits him before leaving for college. After testing poorly with audiences, the ending was eventually reshot. The original ending was unseen until the accidental discovery of an early VHS workprint of the film at a flea market in 2011.[4]

The Godfather's Pizza where Dave visits with Tracy is located at 7920 S. 84th St. in LaVista.

The parking lot where Jim throws away Tracy's nomination signatures in a dumpster was filmed on the corner of N. 50th St. and Underwood Ave. The Carl S. Baum Druggists building in the scene is currently a Subway restaurant.

Linda's house is located at 683 Parkwood Ln.

The Metzler house is located at 1562 S. 187 Cir. along the Shadow Ridge Country Club south of Elkhorn.

The American Family Inn is located at 1110 Fort Crook Road in Bellevue. It has since changed owners and is now a Rodeway Inn.

Reception

Election was met with critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 92%, based on 104 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The critical consensus reads, "Election successfully combines dark humor and intelligent writing in this very witty and enjoyable film."[5] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 83 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[6] Many noted the inspiration to cast Matthew Broderick in such a role-reversal from his iconic "Ferris Bueller."

Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5/4 stars, praising Witherspoon and Payne, and saying that, "...here is a movie that is not simply about an obnoxious student, but also about an imperfect teacher, a lockstep administration, and a student body that is mostly just marking time until it can go out into the world and occupy valuable space".[7]

This article was sourced from Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. World Heritage Encyclopedia content is assembled from numerous content providers, Open Access Publishing, and in compliance with The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Public Library of Science, The Encyclopedia of Life, Open Book Publishers (OBP), PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and USA.gov, which sources content from all federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government publication portals (.gov, .mil, .edu). Funding for USA.gov and content contributors is made possible from the U.S. Congress, E-Government Act of 2002.

Crowd sourced content that is contributed to World Heritage Encyclopedia is peer reviewed and edited by our editorial staff to ensure quality scholarly research articles.

By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. World Heritage Encyclopedia™ is a registered trademark of the World Public Library Association, a non-profit organization.